


The Best Laid Plans

by orphan_account



Category: Devilman
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pre Canon, kind of, mentions of alcohol and drugs because it's ryo after all, ryo kinda knows kinda doesn't (about being satan)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 17:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12090273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When the you're planning the best way to get rid of humanity, you probably shouldn't fall in love with a human.Ryo-centric introspective one-shot about his time leading up to the main events of Devilman.





	The Best Laid Plans

Ryo Asuka is a spectator. He watches from the corner of the classroom, the edge of the sports ground, the fringes of social life, and keeps track of the ways the people around him interact as though their words and actions were so many plays in a giant game. He sees which gambits elicit which responses, he learns how to win and lose in a given situation, how to steer the action toward a goal. He becomes a fan in the game of life and human society.

Like so many fans, though, he doesn't actually take part in the game he studies. Of course, he lives, physically, attends school, perfunctorily, and generally does what is needed but no more. No friends ever visit his house, no teachers ever meet with his father, and he never fights for the attention of said father against endless work and research travel. If anything were to happen to him, almost no one could even vouch for his having existed at all, a thought which should maybe disturb him but which doesn't cross his mind. He doesn't think about the fact that even fewer people-- perhaps. not even he himself-- could say much of anything about his childhood, either, if one were to ask (no one does). Ryo just continues to pay his admission fees to watch the game, and keeps learning.

Like so many fans, he collects his data almost compulsively and without thinking about why he does it, what point it could possibly have. Unlike most fans, though, there _is_ a point to his obsession. In the back of his mind, he knows one day he will put all he has learned to use, play a game to overshadow all other games. But the thought stays far, far in the back, out of sight even from his own conscious mind's eye for now.

Then one day, much sooner than he had ever planned to do himself, someone invites him to step onto the field. Someone he has been watching for a while, as he watches everyone, but who had caught more of his attention than any single player ought to have. Ryo knows this person to be gentle, timid-- weak, even, the sort always on the losing end of the various social power plays he catalogues-- and yet this person's goodness seems paradoxically, unbreakably strong. It fascinates him.

Akira Fudo, the boy giving him a friendly smile as he introduces himself, looking at him like he really believes in that "strangers are friends you haven't met yet" type of bullshit, fascinates him.

Ryo introduces himself in return, because he doesn't know what else to do. He had never considered that one of the many people he watched might watch him back, might notice him as more than a background face in the stands.

Just like that, Akira makes his way into his life as though he had always belonged there: they talk in the halls, between classes, work together when pairs are called for, walk part of their ways home together. Though Ryo keeps a certain distance-- they never meet outside of school-- he finds himself opening up to his new friend (a friend, he has a friend now? It seems surreal), telling him about his father and his dog and other little things which would seem perfectly normal for anyone else but which he, Ryo Asuka, had never spoken of with anyone before. Suddenly, he doesn't seem able to focus on his observations or maintain his detachment from everything. Whatever had been driving him doesn't feel all that important, though it still lurks somewhere in the back of his mind.

The rest of his mind is taken up with thoughts of a dark-haired, kind-eyed boy, soft-faced and soft-hearted. Too soft for the world around him, much too soft to deal with... _whatever_ the future might bring.

He probably has very soft lips, too, Ryo finds himself thinking.

He doesn't get to find out one way or the other before circumstances separate them, and it is several years before their paths cross again. The time hasn't changed Akira, but it has changed Ryo, and this time he has no regard for the rules of society, no patience for studying and no care for keeping up appearances. This time it is he who reaches out to the other boy, but it isn't a friendly act-- it is desperate, a hand not tentatively offering amicability but rather demanding and begging for a comrade, a companion, someone to trust. Someone to drag down with him, someone to lift him up and save him.

He isn't sure whether he's abandoned his game plan or whether this IS his game plan; he has no plans and everything is going precisely according to them. He can't think about it. He can't think about anything, he thinks (with an internal laugh at the irony) as he fumbles a bottle of beer open with sweaty fingers.

The sweat could be from the stress of everything (that had happened, that would happen), or an effect of whatever he had been smoking (he hadn't really pressed the person he'd bought the drugs from for information-- he hadn't really cared what he was buying or how much he was paying for it; it didn't matter. So little mattered anymore). On the other hand, the sweat could also be due to the way Akira, who after all this time had agreed to go with him, who after everything had still agreed to _stay_ with him, was now sitting beside him in the dark, hot room, illuminated in flashes of colored light from the dance floor.

_Cast aside your reason and act on instinct alone._

That's what Ryo told Akira, and what he tells himself to do. It's what his body and the drugs and alcohol coursing through it are screaming for, but he still can't bring himself to find out just how soft those lips might be. Somehow it feels wrong in a way that has nothing to do with puritanical disapproval of carnality, somehow it would taint Akira in a way which is more metaphysical than physical. The lurking presence in the corner of his mind knows, just _knows_ that Akira is Good and he himself Evil in a way that would make Ryo the defiler even if Akira did every dirty thing he wished for to him.

Akira is Heaven and Ryo is burning in his own personal Hell.

He finishes his drink far too quickly, and through the haze of emotions and chemicals he shoots his friend a wicked smile, putting on an air of casual abandon. Deep in his heart, he realizes he is lost, he has lost, all is lost.

Ryo smashes the bottle. There will be no going back.


End file.
